"Unfortunately, the real-life world she has limned in these pages is so willfully banal, so depressingly clichéd that “The Casual Vacancy” is not only disappointing — it’s dull. The novel — which takes place in the tiny, fictional English village of Pagford, and chronicles the political and personal fallout created by the sudden death of a member of the parish council named Barry Fairbrother — reads like an odd mash-up of a dark soap opera like “Peyton Place” with one of those very British Barbara Pym novels, depicting small-town, circumscribed lives."

"IIf you want to picture the Mollisons, cast your minds back to 4 Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey. It was the home of the Dursleys, who locked their orphaned nephew Harry Potter under the stairs to stamp out his wizardry. With their stifling, smug suburban values, the Dursleys stood for everything Rowling despises, and they are reincarnated here but with extra venom and with a fraction of the fun. ... There's no magic in this book."

"Rowling certainly pulls no punches in her descriptions. The adult characters are mostly nasty people who are motivated by self interest and petty victories. The male adult characters in particular are, with few exceptions, often-violent misogynists, while the women are mostly weak and self-loathing (though at least a few of them are also well intentioned.)"

"The plot is often predictable; it requires a large helping of artificial contrivance; and it lurches into melodrama in the final act. The rules probably require this, and it all rattles along nicely enough, but it leaves a slight sense of disappointment."

"But whereas Rowling’s shepherding of readers was, in the Harry Potter series, an essential asset, in “The Casual Vacancy” her firm hand can feel constraining. She leaves little space for the peripheral or the ambiguous; hidden secrets are labelled as hidden secrets, and events are easy to predict. We seem to watch people move around Pagford as if they were on Harry’s magical parchment map of Hogwarts."